using a canon a100 digital camera for video?

[ratz]

im not sure if this is the right place to ask this... but it is regarding recording video so i thought why the hell not...

i know you can record around 4 minutes with this cam with the 64 mb card (it says 30 seconds for the 8 mb so you do the math) the thing im wondering is if any one knows if its possiible to have it recording directly to the computer and there for record longer... using the ubs cord... and if so what such program might i need to do this...

also... i know that certain digital cameras can be used as a web cam... is this 1

[shaynew]

Some of my advice may require hardware you don't have. Sorry if this is problem.

If all you want to do is move the movies in your computer and play them, simply use the procedure in your manual for downloading pictures, the movies get transsferred the same way. If you have XP you don't even need to use Cannon's software. Windows Media player will play such files.

The video files created by my cannon A70 are AVI files that are 320x240 and use an MJPEG codec (compression scheme). These properties make the video hard to import into video editors that prefer DV or MPEG codec files (most of them).

Quicktime Pro can import and convert such files to quicktime with a little quality loss if you use the "Animation" codec.

I'd say the best way to get still digital camera movies you've captured previously from your camera into a computer is to
1) connect up the analog A/V out
2) to a capture card with analog video-IN in or (better) send the camera's output to a hardware DV converter (a camcorder with "passthrough" or Analog/Digital converter box like the ADVC-100)
3) the video capture card or (better) A/D converter feeding to a firewire i/o port that gets your video into the DV codec and resolution.

Once all this is set up start capturing and then start playing the movie on your camera like you were watching it using the camera's display. This will send video into your computer to the file created by the capture program.

Note that a Cannon still camera "video" is also only 15 frames per second (fps), at least on my A70, so it won't look very good if there's large or fast motion going on. Converting to DV doesn't add any frames with new information in them when it converts to DV that uses a higher fps.

Incidentally, you can also use cannon digital cameras as web cams of sorts.
1) hook up the analog a/v out to a hardware A/D video converer and
2) connect that to your firewire port (can't use video card with analog in for this)
3) use the free Trackercam software (at trackercam.com) as your web cam software

The problem here is that the camera wants to keep cutting itself off to save battery. You could check your manual to see if this feature can be turned off. The ideal web camera is a camcorder that is plugged in to a power supply with no tape inserted so it won't try to turn itself off.

If you want to capture live video from your still camera to disk, do the same thing (analog video out from camera -> something that makes that into DV video -> appropriate capture software (scenalyzer works best for firewire captures). The camera does not need to be in movie record mode, it just has to be in the mode where it displays what it sees to it's LCD panel on the back, because anything sent to the LCD panel also gets sent to the camera's analog A/V out. Beware of the camera cutting itself off though.


I don't know about capturing live video from a camera via its USB. Never tried it. Consult your owners maual to see if it can work as a USB webcam with software designed for use with webcams.


--Shayne